Page 8 of Reinventing Cato
“Busy.”
“Aye, I suppose criminals don’t stop for Christmas. Any chance of you coming back up here to live?”
“No.”
“Do you get much chance to play?”
“No.”
“That’s a shame. You’re still just about adequate.”
Vigge laughed. “Still the same old Hendry.”
“Less of the old.”
“You’ve dyed your hair grey then?”
Hendry chuckled. “It’ll be you one day. I’m just grateful I’ve still got hair. And I’m only twelve years older than you. That’s nothing.”
“You’re right.” And somehow it seemed a lot less now than it had when Vigge was a teenager.
Temptation reared its head, just for a moment, but Vigge batted it away. He didn’t need that sort of complication.
“Want to come back to my place for a nightcap after we’ve played the New Year in?”
Vigge shook his head. “Sorry. I have an early flight tomorrow.”
“Right you are. Come on then. Another set.”
Vigge was aware there was more to that offer of a drink than he wanted to hear, an attraction on Hendry’s part that Vigge had done his best to pretend didn’t exist until Hendry had come out and said it. Sixteen-year-old Vigge had turned him down and Hendry had never brought it up again. Then life had got in the way.
At midnight, they played the New Year in withAuld Lang Syne. Vigge gave Hendry a hug and set off back to his parents’. Partway there, he changed his mind, turned and headed in the other direction.
He’d missed the chance at midnight to leap into the new year, one of the Danish traditions he held onto. If he was inside when the clock ticked down, he’d usually scramble to the highest point he could find—stairs, chair, kitchen table, then leap on the final chime.
Checking no one was watching, he jumped forward in the snow.Be different. Stop worrying about things I can’t change. Take a chance. Stop telling myself no.Jumping was meant to crush any hardships or problems that might be lurking in the year to come. Easier to believe the jump made a difference when he was a child, though he still hoped. He wished his life was different.
Eighteen years ago, there had been no leap. Not for Vigge and he hoped not for his brother or Fi. His greatest wish was that neither of them had deliberately leapt to their death because if they had, it was Vigge’s fault.
He slipped a couple of times as he made his way to the place where Fi, and most likely his brother too, had died. He stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked over the stone wall down at the black swirling water. He’d gone through so many scenarios of what might have happened, then and in the years since, and it was hard to accept he’d never know.
All he knew for certain was that Anders and Fi had overheard him telling his parents he was gay. Fi had been upset. She was the closest thing to a girlfriend Vigge had ever been likely to have. Maybe, in being her friend, he’d misled her, but not made her want to kill herself. He couldn’t believe that. Didn’t want to believe it. Had she slipped and Anders had jumped in to save her? She’d drowned, her body discovered the next day, but Anders had never been found.
Vigge stayed looking down at the water for longer than he should have. Long enough to gather a coating of snow, long enough for his heart to chill, long enough for Hendry to pull up in his car and lower his window.
“You okay?” Hendry asked.
No.Vigge wasn’t sure he could speak without sobbing. He turned back to the water. A moment later, Hendry joined him, pulling on his coat, fastening the buttons.Wrongly.
“I hope you’re not thinking of doing something stupid,” Hendry said.
Vigge gave a short laugh.
“Because if you were, you could do something a little less stupid and come home with me.”
“You shouldn’t be driving.”
“You going to arrest me, officer?”
